


In Another Life

by drosophilase



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 23:35:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/817358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drosophilase/pseuds/drosophilase
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regarding the SAG awards.  Warning: mentions of Will and sort-of romantic Chris/Will; angst; no happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Another Life

**Author's Note:**

> I mean it when I say there's no happy ending. Sorry in advance.

He’s completely, utterly blindsighted when Chris finally arrives, Darren’s happy grin falling absolutely flat.

Joey bumps his shoulder sympathetically as he tries to save face, standing up to greet Chris and Will with the brightest smile he can manage.  Chris doesn’t quite meet his gaze but he puts on a smile, too.  

Cameras are everywhere.

A producer comes up and wants Darren to film an intro piece.  He knows if he fakes a smile it’ll show, so he does his best to seem dead-pan funny instead of flat rude.  The swallow of alcohol actually helps a lot and as soon as the producer is clapping a hand on his shoulder Darren downs the glass and gets up to get another.

Joey’s knee-deep in some discussion about two-toed sloths with Mark, and he doesn’t even look up when Darren pushes his chair back.  Neither does Chris, he pretends not to notice.

He makes an out-loud excuse that no one acknowledges to go visit other tables.  He shakes hands and kisses cheeks and tries not to think too hard about what this means.  He should be happy for Chris, he should be a good friend, he should be, he should.

 

He gets back to the table at a few minutes to start and Chris isn’t back.  Will’s gone too.  Darren grimaces around the tight squeeze of his stomach, the dread that leaks into his veins.  

It doesn’t really involve Darren, but then it really fucking feels like it does.  

Music starts to play almost as soon as Chris sits down and when Darren turns to look at the stage he can only see the back of Chris’s head.  He sends a silent thank-you to whoever made the seating arrangements.

He struggles to breathe normally through the majority of the show, watching the cameras warily as Joey sends him a string of supportive texts, half of which equate Will to the antichrist.  Darren loves him for trying, but he can see Will smiling at Chris and the way Chris’s shoulders are shaking as he tries to hold back his laugh and it feels like his soul is shredding.

Chris slips away to the bathroom after the final commercial break is called, dropping a kiss to Will’s forehead as he passes.  Darren chokes on air, breath stopping halfway to his lungs.  Behind him, Joey hisses a sharp intake of breath.  Will is watching them react, eyes wide.  Chris is two steps away and realizes, stops as his back goes stiff and straight.  Darren watches him ball his hands into fists, then keep walking.

They all watch him leave.

Will looks  _terrified_.  ”Darren, we—”

He violently pushes his chair back, shaking his head.  Will shuts up.  Darren doesn’t spare a glance to the dozens of eyes staring him down, buttoning his jacket with shaking fingers of barely-withheld emotion as he rushes after Chris.

One look at his face and Chris locks the bathroom door.  They’re alone.

“When were you going to tell me?”  Darren’s voice is barely intelligible through the crack and strain of holding his fragmented soul together, but it’s there.

Chris doesn’t turn around.  ”I don’t know.”

Darren laughs a little, hollow disbelief.  ”God, okay, well excuse the fuck out of me for thinking I meant a little bit more to you than that.”

Chris shrugs, turns to the side.  His arms are crossed, staring at his shoes.  Darren really is going to cry now.  He closes his eyes and tries to breathe.

“Fuck, Chris… do you love him?”

He still won’t meet his gaze.  ”Well, no.  Not yet.  I think I could.”

Darren nods brokenly, running a hand through his hair.  ”Alright, good.  Good for you, I’m really happy for you both,” he chokes out, genuinely trying to sound like he is.  It doesn’t work.

He clears his throat, but Chris doesn’t move, staring in profile at the stretch of blank wall.  Darren wishes he could take a picture, but instead he commits to memory the stretch of his neck and drape of his fingers as best as he can, and turns to leave.

“Darren, what did you think I was going to do?”

The fine tremor in his voice makes Darren turn back around.  He’s dropped his arms, thumbs pressed into his thighs and Darren can’t look into the pain on his face knowing he’s personally responsible.

He tries to reply, but the words stick hot in his throat.

“Did you think I was going to… to sit around and wait for you to figure yourself out?  Did you think I was going to just be someone you had to hide?  Were we just going to pretend to be co-stars and nothing more for the rest of our lives, to never get to interact in public?  Until when, Darren?  We were forcibly outed or… or got married?”

Darren doesn’t wipe at the hot wet streaks down his face, doesn’t sniff against the runny feeling in his nose, doesn’t move a muscle.

Chris scoffs a little, bitterly thumbing away a tear that hasn’t yet fallen.  The red in his face subsides, a little, as he laughs emptily.  ”Who were we fooling, Darren?  It wasn’t ever going to work.  Doomed from the start.”

“I wanted it to work,” Darren says finally, feeling the world slipping out from under his feet.  He tries to remember the things Chris said under cover of darkness, breathed into his ear and pressed into his skin, but there’s nothing but his twisted, angry face, out of place with the cut of a blue tuxedo.

“I wanted a lot of things,” Chris says with finality, moving to turn away again.

And Darren can see it, everything he loves sliding right through his fingers.  Not just Chris with blazing touches and beautiful skin against soft blue sheets, but Chris with strong arms that let him forget about everything else for a little while.  Chris with endless dry humor, Chris with sudden insight that Darren can’t believe he has the capacity to understand.  Chris that amazes him just by existing. 

Chris that he’s going to lose in every way.

“No,” Darren says, and Chris stops, raises an eyebrow.  ”No, I know what I want and this isn’t it.  Chris, you’re my best friend.  You’re… you’re fucking everything, and the thought of you walking away right now…”

Chris smiles sadly, opening his mouth before Darren cuts him off.

“No, I need to know.  You have to tell me.  I want to be happy for you because happiness is all I ever want for you, but Chris, I have to know.  Did you love me?”  Darren feels about two inches tall, pleading for whatever Chris is willing to give him, begging for scraps.

Something scrunches his eyebrows, sets the grimace of his mouth.  ”Darren, I have a boyfriend now.  You’re free of me and all the confusing sexuality that goes with that.”  

Darren wants to protest, to scream, to tell him he’s wrong, but he can hear the determination.  Chris’s mind is made up.  

“Just… please take this for the good that it is.  Because of Will I don’t have to worry about hiding anymore, and now you’ll find a girl, some young, hot, up-and-coming recording artist or something, who can do the same for you.”

He squeezes Darren’s shoulder as he passes, shutting the door behind him.  The thud of wood meeting metal frame is the exact sound of Darren’s heart shattering.

—

_“Darren, can we take a picture?”_

Just ten more feet and he’s out.  He poses obligingly.  If he can just make it past these paps he’s home free.

_“Darren, can you do my laundry?”_

Chris folding laundry and laughing at how many of Darren’s shirts are mixed with his.

“Dude, I’m so shitty at laundry,” Darren replies automatically, saying whatever comes off the top of his head as he scribbles autographs.

_“Could you wash my car?”_

Darren kissing Chris to the steady beating of automated brushes, a rare almost-public moment alone.

“Ah, man, I’m terrible at that too, I don’t even wash my car.”

Darren kissing Chris, Darren touching Chris, Chris smiling and laughing and moaning and falling apart—

“But maybe what you need to find is a really hot, young girl who can do that for you.”

The words are a bitter dead weight on his chest, his tongue.  His new reality.

—

“I had a really nice time tonight,” Will says, smiling at Chris like he means it with all his heart.

“I’m so glad,” Chris smiles back.  This is nice, this is good.  Different, but not unpleasantly so.  It’s so nice to not be thinking three steps ahead of himself.  It’s good, it’s nice, it’s…

“You look so handsome, by the way,” Will compliments, tugging at Chris’s jacket sleeve.

He rolls his eyes good-naturedly.  "You already told me that.”

“It was worth saying again,” Will shrugs.  Touched, Chris leans in to kiss his cheek.

For the first time, he doesn’t think about Darren when he does it.


End file.
